Mated by a Waiter.
CHAPTER I.
BLACK AND WHITE.
Jones! I mention him here because he is the first and last word of the story. It is the story of what might be called a game of chess between me and him; for I never made a move, but he made a counter-move. You must remember though that he played, so to speak, blindfold, while I started the game, not with the view of mating him, but merely for the fun of playing.
There was to be a Review of the Fleet, and the inhabitants of Ryde rejoiced, as befitted sons of the sea. Although many of them would be reduced to living in their cellars, like their own black-beetles, so that they might harbour the patriotic immigrant, they sacrificed themselves ungrudgingly. No, it was not the natives who grumbled.
My friends, Jack Woolwich and Merton Towers, being in the Civil Service, naturally desired to pay a compliment to the less civil department of State, and picked their month's holiday so as to include the Review. They took care to let the Review come out at the posterior extremity of the holiday, so as to find them quite well and in the enjoyment of excellent quarters at economical rates. They selected a comfortable but unfashionable hotel, at moderate but uninclusive terms, and joyously stretched their free limbs unswaddled by red-tape. Soon London became a forgotten nightmare.
They wrote to me irregularly, tantalising me unwittingly with glimpses of buoyant wave and sunny pasture. It fretted me to be immured in the stone-prison of the metropolis, and my friends' letters did but sprinkle sea-salt on my wounds; for I was working up a medical practice in the northern district, and my absence might prove fatal—not so much, perhaps, to my patients as to my prospects. I was beginning to be recognised as a specialist in throats and eyes, and I invariably sent my clients' ears to my old hospital chum, Robins, which increased the respect of the neighbourhood for my professional powers. Your general practitioner is a suspiciously omniscient person, and it is far sager to know less and to charge more.
"My dear Ted," wrote the Woolwich Infant (of course we could not escape calling Jack Woolwich thus), "I do wish we had you here. Such larks! We've got the most comical cuss of a waiter you ever saw. I feel sure he would appeal irresistibly to your sense of humour. He seems to boss the whole establishment. His name is Jones; and when you have known him a day you feel that he is the only Jones—the only Jones possible. He is a middle-aged man, with a slight stoop and a cat-like crawl. His face is large and flabby, ornamented with mutton-chop whiskers, streaked as with the silver of half a century of tips. He is always at your elbow—a mercenary Mephistopheles—suggesting drives or sails, and recommending certain yachts, boats, and carriages with insinuative irresistibleness. He has the tenacity of an army of able-bodied leeches, and if you do not take his advice he spoils your day. You may shake him off by fleeing into the interior of the Isle, or plunging into the sea; but you cannot be always trotting about or bathing; and at mealtimes he waits upon those who have disregarded his recommendations. He has a hopelessly corruptive effect on the soul, and I, who have always prided myself on my immaculate moral get-up, was driven to desperate lying within twenty-four hours of my arrival. I told him how much I had enjoyed the carriage-drive he had counselled, or the sail he had sanctioned by his approval; and, in return, he regaled me with titbits at our table d'hôte dinner. But the next day he followed me about with large, reproachful eyes, in grieved silence. I saw that he knew all; and I dragged myself along with my tail between my legs, miserably asking myself how I could regain his respect.
"THE INFANT."